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Anderson Montgomery, LLC was a full service minority-owned and operated investment banking and financial services company that provided corporate debt and equity underwriting, research, sales and trading and municipal finance. The company was formed by the merger of Anderson Investment Banking, the firm founded by Yovanna Anderson, and Anthony Montgomery Securities. With Yovanna serving as Managing Director and Anthony as Principal Director and Senior Vice President they began providing clients with a wider range of personalized and technolog
ically advanced investment management capabilities.
Under Yovanna’s leadership, coupled with Anthony’s vast knowledge of the business, revenues generated from the investment banking division skyrocketed and continued to grow each year. Now, her goal was to expand the scope of their operation into the areas of consumer and community banking, commercial banking, as well as asset and wealth management. But that was when Vince began to get sick.
He was diagnosed with Chronic rhinosinusitis, a condition in which the cavities around the nasal passages became inflamed and swollen and interfered with drainage, making breathing difficult. When the doctor said the Vince needed to use a humidifier to add moisture to the air, avoid cigarette smoke and polluted air, Yovanna knew that New York wasn’t where he needed to be. She and Vince moved to Arizona for the climate and got him seen by doctor’s at The Mayo Clinic. This put Yovanna’s active involvement in the expansion on hold, but not the expansion. That was now moving ahead with Vince and Yovanna’s daughter, London Caldwell driving the project. She was just as smart and equally driven as her mother.
After graduating high school three days after her seventeenth birthday, London was enrolled in Stanford and by the time she was twenty-two, she had earned bachelor's degrees in mathematics and accounting. After completing master’s degree programs in finance and economics at twenty-five, London went to apply for an entry level job at her mother’s firm.
Once Anthony Montgomery got finished laughing at her request and noticed that she wasn’t, London explained that she wanted to learn every aspect of the business and the only way to do that was to start at the bottom and do every job.
“If that’s what my baby girl wants, give it to her,” Yovanna said when Anthony told her about it.
“I’m not going to make it easy for her.”
“She wouldn’t have it any other way. So you make her earn everything she gets,” were her mother’s orders.
So London started out as an Analyst and worked her ass off to make Associate. She rose quickly on her team and was soon given the title team leader, before being promoted to Junior Vice President, which was the exact opposite path that Gavin took to his position as a Junior Vice President at Anderson Montgomery.
It took Gavin five and a half years to graduate from Georgia College with a bachelor's degree in business administration, and another three to get his master's degree in finance. It wasn’t that he wasn’t as smart as his sister, nothing of the sort. Gavin just liked to have fun and he enjoyed those years to the fullest. After getting his master’s, he spent the next year and a half between fucking around in the game with Butch, traveling to anyplace with a beach and enjoying the pleasures of women.
A passion of mine.
It wasn’t until Yovanna threatened to cut off his money did Gavin show up at the firm and was hired as a Junior VP. Although his current title was Vice President of Capital Markets and London’s was Vice President of Mergers and Acquisitions, they were sharing the Managing Director duties in their mothers absence.
“You busy?” Gavin stuck his head in to ask.
“Never for you.”
London stood up and came around her desk. She was dressed in a fuchsia Alexander Wang long-sleeve curve zipper A-line dress that cling to her like skin and popped against her caramel skin. Her Alexander Wang Rina leather slingback pumps made her long shapely legs look incredible. Simply put, London was beautiful.
“What’s up?”
“You look nice in that dress,” Gavin said to his sister as he sat down on the plush couch in her office.
“Thank you.”
“I need to tell you something. Something you’re not going to want to hear and you are definitely not going to be happy about,” Gavin began.
“It’s way too early for this.” London sat down in the chair across from him and crossed her leg. “Okay, I’m ready. Tell me what I’m not going to be happy about?” London asked even though she already had a good idea.
“Drum and Greg Mac are dead and I’m holding things down for Butch.”
“I knew it.” London shook her head. “I knew when you started going to see Butchie a lot more often that something was going on, I just never expected it to be anything remotely close to this.” London nodded her head. “Why, Gavin?”
“You know why.”
“I understand that with Drum and Greg Mac dead, somebody has to step up, but why you, why does it have to be you?”
“Butch made two points that I couldn’t argue with.”
“What did he say?”
“He reminded me that that is our business too and it’s that business that makes this business do what it do.” He paused and looked at London. “And his second point applies to you too.”
“Okay, what was his second point?”
“With him locked down, and Pop sick, I’m the only one I can trust to do it. And that applies to you too. You can’t trust anybody but me to do this either.”